WTO Authorizes Additional Duties on Forest and Fishery Products

The WTO’s Dispute Settlement Body (DSB), at its November 24 and 26 meeting, authorized the EC, Brazil, India, Japan, Korea, Canada and Mexico to suspend concessions and other obligations for the United States’ failure to repeal the Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act of 2000, the so-called “Byrd Amendment”.  Under the Byrd Amendment, duties collected on products from foreign countries found in violation of U.S. trade law go into a fund for distribution to eligible domestic producers.

The level of concessions that can be withheld by a country in a given year is equal to 72 percent of the total disbursements made under the CDSOA for the preceding year relating to anti-dumping and/or countervailing duties collected on imports from that country.  To date, five out of the seven countries have submitted indicative lists of products that could be subject to retaliation.  Three of the lists include forest and/or fishery products (Indicative List of Forest and Fishery Products That Could Be Subject To Retaliatory Tariffs).  In the case of Canada, the list is quite extensive, so it would only be able to target a small proportion of the products on the list based upon the current level of disbursements.